Sam Wainwright (Australian socialist writer and national executive member of the Socialist Alliance) (2020): “The case is also about the empire. Assange is not a US citizen and the crimes he is alleged to have committed did not take place on US soil. The US simply has no right to impose extraterritorial legal authority over the whole world. Only a vassal state would even contemplate taking the US extradition request seriously. This explains the failure of both the[Australian] federal government and the Labor “opposition” to even raise a squeak in protest. They have placed military and intelligence allegiance to the US above such niceties as the rule of law. The post-September 11, 2001, US-led invasions have laid waste to great swathes of the Middle-East, leaving millions dead and millions more displaced. Speaking about this in a Facebook post on September 12 this year, US Iraq War veteran and now anti-war campaigner Vince Emanuele declared: “In the end, we must end the US Empire if we hope to survive the century. It’s just that simple. Only full-scale demilitarization will suffice. Our only hope is international solidarity across national boundaries. I believe another world is possible.”Stopping and dismantling this horrific war machine starts with telling the truth. To do that, we need access to the truth. For that reason, more than any other, Julian Assange must be set free” (Sam Wainwright, “Julian Assange’s treatment amounts to torture: it must end”, Green Left, issue 1281, 17 September 2020: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/julian-assanges-treatment-amounts-torture-it-must-end .